I Want-to-Do Moments: From Home to Beauty

I Want-to-Do Moments: From Home to Beauty

For big projects and small fixes, people look for how-to videos on YouTube,
increasingly on mobile. Of smartphone users, 91% turn to their devices for ideas
while completing a task. See how brands like Home Depot and M·A·C are using mobile
video to reach people in these 'I-want-to-do' micro-moments.

Put Google research and insight behind your thinking

Do you know how to build a treehouse? Cook the perfect pancake? Do a french braid?
Neither do I. But life (and 3-year-old daughters) sometimes require us to do all of
this and more in a given day.

Learning how to do these sorts of things used to be time-consuming. We might've
combed through an instruction manual, tracked down an expert, or called up good ole
mom and dad—or worse, customer service. Today, we can find out instantly. We simply
grab the nearest device and search—and not just on Google. Searches related to "how
to" on YouTube are growing 70% year over year,1 and more than 100M hours
of how-to content have been watched in North America so far this year.2

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The most popular how-to
educational searches show a range of interests—from the practical ("how to tie
a tie") to the creative ("how to draw"), from style ("how to curl your hair with a
straightener") to cuisine ("how to make a cake"). And although we see these
searches across age groups, it's most pronounced among millennials. In fact, 67% of
millennials agree that they can find a YouTube video on anything they want
to learn.3

More than 100M hours of how-to content have been watched in North America so far
this year.

Moments of intent

We have mobile technology largely to thank for this consumer behavior shift.
Ninety-one percent of smartphone users turn to their smartphone for ideas while
doing a given task.4 Being constantly connected has trained us to expect
immediacy and relevance in moments of intent—the I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go,
I-want-to-do, and I-want-to-buy moments. These micro-moments are the
new battlegrounds for people's hearts, minds, and dollars.

"Mobile has significantly changed how we connect with customers at The Home Depot,"
says Trish Mueller, senior vice president and chief marketing officer. "We're now
laser focused on how we can use digital to deliver against our customers' needs
every moment of the day and every step of their home improvement experience."

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Being there in these moments may be the single most important thing a marketer can
do, but many aren't. Marketing is still largely planned against brand moments and
milestones, and it is anchored to campaign flights and product launches—not
personal moments like these. The reason for this is simple. Most marketing plans
are grounded in traditional one-way media: Broadcast from brands to large
audiences. Without signals of intent, traditional media makes it impossible to know
whether someone actually needs or wants your product.

But when people ask how to do something, that's a need. That's someone asking, "can
you help me out?" Digital media let brands respond to those questions and be there
at the very moment someone needs them most. Brands that successfully do this can
win loyalty and drive sales to boot. In fact, nearly one in three millennials say
they've purchased a product as a result of watching a how-to video.5

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How-to content comes to the rescue

Successful brands are building content strategies around these "I-want-to-do"
moments. On YouTube, The Home Depot has a range of how-tos for
home improvement, from outdoor projects to homeowner basics. Top paint brand
Valspar's YouTube channel has content that spans from
project inspiration and color guidance to painting processes and tools, helping
people throughout the purchase journey. "[Seeking content] can happen early in the
project for those who plan in advance, during store visits to guide purchase
decisions, and even in the middle of painting a room for those who didn't prepare
or want to ensure they are 'doing it right,'" says Heidi Petz, vice president of
marketing at Valspar. The brand makes sure users can easily find and engage with
content across screens. "Mobile is increasingly becoming the dominant way
[consumers] access our content," says Petz.

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M·A·C has used its range of how-to beauty content to drive sales in local markets.
Last year, the beauty brand partnered with Google on a YouTube gadget that allows
viewers to shop directly from its "Instant Artistry" how-to video series on its
local e-commerce platforms. "A user watching our videos in Brazil will engage with
a version of the gadget that is entirely in Portuguese and will be driven directly
to the Brazilian M·A·C Cosmetics site to purchase. We have seen fantastic
engagement as well as incremental sales on e-commerce that far exceeded our
expectations," says Noelle Sadler vice president of global consumer engagement.

67% of millennials agree that they can find a YouTube video on anything
they want to learn.

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TOP "HOW-TO" TRENDS

Home improvement, beauty, and cooking are among the most popular "I-want-to-do"
topics.6 We looked at Google and YouTube data to see what people are
looking to do in these categories.

Beauty

How-to searches on the hair-coloring technique "balayage" are surging, and so are
"silver hair" (as people look to get in on the granny hair trend) and "man bun"7 (because women shouldn't have all
the fun).

People are also watching more "Get Ready With Me" videos—types of beauty tutorials
that are growing on YouTube—with watch time up 24% YoY.8 In each one of
these videos, the creator walks the audience through his or her preparation for
some event, be it a night out, a day at work, or an outdoor music festival. Two
million hours of these videos have been watched so far this
year.9

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Cooking

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Millennials have driven massive growth in subscriptions to food channels on
YouTube, and 75% of that growth
comes from mobile devices. "Food hack" videos, which show kitchen tricks that
make cooking easier (and more fun), draw interest from nearly one in four of
millennials.10 YouTube creator CrazyRussianHacker, a master of the genre, has more than
4.3M subscribers.

Home

When it comes to the home, perennial concerns—such as "how to unclog a toilet,"
"how to remove wallpaper," and "how to fix a leaky faucet"—top the most-searched
list.11

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When people ask how to do something, that’s a need. That's someone asking 'can you
help me out?'

A how-to for marketers

How can you win I-want-to-do moments? Here are some of the best practices we are
seeing from brands:

•Identify the I-want-to-do moments in which consumers have
a need and your brand can play a role. Find these moments across the entire
consumer journey and put them at the center of your strategy.

•What are the questions and concerns people have related to
the types of products you sell or the types of projects they are used for? What do
people want to learn about them? (Tools such as Google Trends and Google Consumer Surveys can help answer these
questions.) Create I-want-to-do content for your website and YouTube channel to
serve as resources for them.

•Look at when how-to searches occur. Are there particular
times of day, week, or year when some topics are more popular?

•Make your videos easy to find by adding descriptive
titles, details, and relevant tags to each video. You can also promote your content
by TrueView in-stream and in-display, and you
can reach the right viewers through affinity, in-market, and topic targeting.

•Did you reach your audiences? Did they pay attention? What
implications did it have on their perceptions and actions? Measurement solutions,
such as Google's Brand Lift, can help answer these questions.

Sources1 Google Data, Q1 2014–Q1 2015, U.S.2 Google Data, 2015, North America. Classification as a "how to" video
was based on public data such as headlines, tags, etc., and may not account for
every "how to" instructional video available on YouTube.3 Google Consumer Survey, April 2015, U.S. Online population aged 18-34
n=385.4 Google/Ipsos, Consumers in the Micro-Moment study, March 2015. Based
on the online population n=9598.5 Google Consumer Survey, April 2015. n=1128.6 Google Data, 2015, U.S.7 Google Trends, North America, April 30, 2015. Top Rising Searches in
the Hair category in the past 90 days.8 Google Data, North America, Jan–April 2014, Jan–April 2015.
Classification as a "get ready with me" video was based on public data such as
headlines, tags, etc., and may not account for every "get ready with me" video
available on YouTube.9 Google Data, North America, 2015. Classification as a "get ready with
me" video was based on public data such as headlines, tags, etc., and may not
account for every "get ready with me" video available on YouTube.10 Google Consumer Survey, May 2015, U.S. Online population aged 18-35
n=1258.11 Google Data, Q1 2015.